


Act Under Fire (Something of Value Breaks)

by ERNest



Category: Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Dreams and Nightmares, House of Yesterday's Tomorrow, Moondrop | Moonstone Opal (Disney), cassandra is fine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-09 17:30:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20998637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ERNest/pseuds/ERNest
Summary: In her dreams, Cassandra stumbles.In her dreams, Cassandra hesitates.In her dreams, Cassandra flinches.





	Act Under Fire (Something of Value Breaks)

**Author's Note:**

**In her dreams, Cassandra stumbles.** This time she does everything right and is good and brave and true so she can deserve to fight by Rapunzel’s side. She harbors no anger or resentment because she is an adult and has finally learned to communicate like one, and they know how to trust each other and when to give each other space, and they _never_ let anything fester (like her arm, whispers her imperfect future). She trains daily to increase her strength and stamina and constitution, until she knows she can protect herself and those around her.

She does everything right and it’s still not enough. She lets go of the princess’s hand too soon or she fumbles her sword at a critical moment and just misses her mark, or she makes a tiny mistake, or it just goes wrong because it goes wrong, and again and again she stumbles from her dreams, heart aching with the too-real feeling that Rapunzel is dead because of her.

-/-/-

**In her dreams, Cassandra hesitates.** After all that time spent waiting in the wings, when her cue finally comes she misses it. Or she decides the play’s not worth doing. A wand waved in anger and inexperience wipes away years of friendship but also months of strife and if this younger girl from the tower doesn’t trust so easily, neither does she apologize so constantly. She keeps waiting to finish the potion because she wants to keep everything how it used to be, until she waits too long and loses her chance. The Rapunzel she knew will never emerge.

She steps back to before the event that neither of them is willing to talk about, even now, and blissfully unaware of how her hand works and moves, she is only aware of how uneasy she is about the Great Tree. She finds she _cannot _follow the rest of the group in there, even if they’ll need her, even if it will all go disastrously wrong without her. She’s frozen and the sun she orbits has gone too far away to thaw her indecision.

Wait. Rewind. She drinks the tea, she feels the incredible lightness of chirping whenever she speaks, and she is _petrified_ by the prospect of such freedom and spontaneity, so she declines the offer and demands to be turned back to a human right away. Rapunzel will be back within the hour and she’ll be just _fine_, Cassandra tells herself.

Or no, go further back. When Rapunzel heaves a sigh and wishes for a normal day without being constantly protected, Cassandra thinks of what her father would say if she led her charge into danger, so she looks down instead of admitting she knows how to sneak her out of the castle. Or she does give her an adventure but something stops her from going all the way to the weird plaque she found. It feels like a secret for her alone.

Cassandra hesitates because she is afraid, or because she doesn’t know what to do, or because her mind is simply on something else. When the scene has played out without her (they’re better off without you, whispers a thought that’s not her own), there’s no way to know if Rapunzel has survived because she’s just gone, impossible to reach.

-/-/-

**In her dreams, Cassandra flinches.** The song Rapunzel can’t stop herself from singing, and the way green eyes pool to black and then flare green again in an entirely wrong shade, and the sudden weakness of her limbs, are all too much for her. She looks at Rapunzel and all she can do is shudder away in revulsion.

She knows how hard it must be to control that power or to put it down when she’s done using it because – but no, that hasn’t happened yet, not in this dream. In _this_ dream she hasn’t touched any of the black rocks yet and her heart has yet to be hardened, so she doesn’t know anything but the horror of watching the story tell the princess, of hearing her words swallowed by the aching melody that stretches the space between them. There’s nothing she can do, and so she wants nothing to do with it, and turns away from moonstone and sundrop alike.

-/-/-

Every choice Cassandra gets offered is an ugly one, no bargain is easy, and each outcome seems worse than what came before.


End file.
